Jongin stares at the scene happening in front of him. He just saw a lady probably in her 70s kick some dude in the shin to get the last roll of paper towel. He whimpers away from the now empty aisle. He knew he should have done shopping way earlier this week, now he doesn't have any paper towels to use. 

His twins are angels except when they eat. They chew with their mouth open and throw food at each other. He has been surviving the last four years with the glorious help of these disposable napkins. 

He moves on to the next aisle, looking down at his shopping list. It's considerably a short list of stuff but they are barely checked. He cannot give up yet, the 14-day mandatory quarantine will start tomorrow. The whole country will go under locked-down and streets will be off-limit everyone except for some essential workers. God bless the delivery service people since, for the life of him, Jongin can't cook.

Lucky for him, the canned food section still has left a considerable amount of things. He throws in some preserved fruit cans along with some tuna and mackerel. Remembering that he is low on kimchi so he will need to settle for the store-bought ones instead of trying to make one himself. 

The dairy aisle is empty. He groans out loud, Soobin and Yoobin love cheese on their sandwiches. Who doesn't?

"Hello," he answers half-heartedly, trying to quietly push his cart behind two ladies arguing who touched the last bottle of olive oil first.

"Mr. Kim? When are you coming back?" The person from the other line asks. He frowns to look back at the Caller ID to find out it's from his home. 

"Ah yes! Yerim, um... I will be back in 30 minutes or so," he answers, his babysitter never calls him unless it's an emergency. She is quite dependable so her call makes him worried a little. 

"Please don't worry. The kids are fine. I just need to remind you that I will be going home earlier today," she says, almost mumbling like she's chewing something. He hopes it is not the beef jerky that he hid in the kitchen cabinet but he wouldn't hold his breath for it. 

"By the way, could you buy the soup on the way from Yang's Diner since Soobin didn't eat his lunch," she continues and at this point, he is quite sure that Yerim is eating the jerky that he hid. 

"Sure." He sighs, compared to Yoobin, Soobin is a pickier eater so he has been worried about how will he feed his boys in this lockdown.

And today is the first time in a while that he has only brought back one bag of groceries since the boys have been old enough to eat solid food. 

-

The roads are deserted as expected, nothing much to see except a few district workers clearing the streets and putting up notices about the schedule when the sanitization will happen. The neighborhood he lives in is relatively quieter than most residential areas in the city but he likes it for its tranquility to raise his kids. 

There is nothing much aside from one family grocery store and a pharmacy run by an elderly couple. He pulls over the driveway and stops in front of a small two-story house. His house is one of the few houses remaining among the many apartment complexes. The house is old, he is renting it from his parents who have moved back to the countryside. Funnily enough, almost all the houses look identical that his side of the residential block looks like a miniature cityscape in a mayor's office. 

Jongin pretty much raised or is raising his boys alone. The mother has never been in the picture. They are nothing more than acquaintances. He has met her for only a handful of times. First, he met her at his graduation party in a bar. He met her again 4 months later at a cafe about their little 'accident'. Jongin remembered being bodied by the overwhelming sense of disbelief and fear. He was just a fresh graduate then, all wide eyes and bright smiles but boom, congratulation 'you are a father now'. He had avoided her for over a month until he came to terms with the fact that there is no escape to this, well at least to his conscience. 

He braced ahead even when she went down spirally with denial and he took in full responsibility as long as he will have full custody. The process was jarring and tedious, neverending paper works and court visits along with more than a few sleepless nights. On top of it, Soobin is born tinier and was prone to ear infections as an infant. 

His life has just recently settled into a functional cycle then boom, 'we are in the middle of pandemic' happened. The past few weeks have been incredible panic-inducing from the dreadful thoughts of getting layoff to how will he keep his toddlers safe from this unknown disease. He doesn't know how Gong Yoo managed in 'Train to Busan' but Jongin hasn't been working on his cardio exercises to run like that and (spoiler alert) Gong Yoo died at the end anyway. 

He keys into his house, and immediately two little baby-powdered toddlers tackle his legs. 

"Papa!" They chirp happily, even though Soobin looks like he's about to cry while Yoobin smiles sweetly at him. Sometimes he gets freaked out that his boys looked too much like him; from his honey skin to his perpetual pout, down to a perfect tee. 

He sets down both the grocery bag and the take-out soup on the hallway table carefully.

"Why are you guys ?" He laughs, bending down to pick both of them up. Yerim runs into the entry with one giant fluffy towel in her arms. 

"Mr. Kim! Please hold them right there," She wheezes and her feet are not cooperating as she almost slips on his parquet floors. 

When he looks down, there is a big trail of baby powder with a few children footprints on them. 

He hooks the boys' legs within his arms, both of them giggling happily because of the sudden shift in position. 

"Papa Airpawane pwlease," Soobin whispers, tucking his head under Jongin's chin with a sniffle. 

"Not yet," Jongin says fondly, "after Noona dressed you up. Okay, baby?"

Yoobin yanks Soobin's arm and yells into Jongin's ear, "Papa! Hug me too!"

"Alright, alright. Yoobin, didn't Papa tell you to be gentle with your brother?" Jongin says sternly, making the younger twin shrunk into himself. 

Yerim comes to rescue and picks up Yoobin from Jongin, the toddler is about to cry, which would be a disaster because they always copy each other. 

"Here, here. Good boys listen to Papa," she shushes him as she dries his damp hair gently. Jongin heaves a sigh, one crisis avoided.

Jongin walks over to where Yerim is dressing now calm-downed Yoobin. Soobin looks up at him apologetically, still sniffling a bit. 

His heart breaks that he couldn't spend much time with his boys while juggling work. He almost missed their first-walk if not for the winter holidays. He has considered multiple times about trying for a job that he can work from home but now that he has to work from home with two kids who like his attention all the time gonna be a big challenge. 

Yoobin is now dressed in a fuzzy brown onesie with little ears on his hoodie. He is so cute that Jongin wants to gobble him up. He tottles to where Jongin is still standing with Soobin in his arms. He tugs on Jongin's dress pants and proceeds to make the world's most devastating puppy eyes at Jongin and Soobin. 

"I am sowwry," he says as sincere as a 4-year old could and it melts Jongin right there and then some. Soobin clutches his little fist on Jongin's collar and prompts him to let him down. 

As soon as his feet touch the floor, he hugs on to Yoobin and muffles a quiet, "It's okay," to his younger brother. 

Jongin has to refrain from punching the hallway to stop his tears. Yerim heaves a sigh when she sees Jongin sniffling quietly in front of his kids, she hands him a paper towel to use. He gratefully accepts it and blows into it. 

"By the way, that's the last one," she informs him as she maneuvers Soobin to wear his onesie as best as she could because the twins won't let go of each other hands. 

Jongin looks down at the now snotty paper towel pitifully. Napkins it is then. So much laundry will be waiting for him.

_

Soobin and Yoobin stare at their dad fondly as he walks around the kitchen to put up the things in. Before Yerim Noona goes home, she dresses them up in their favorite bear outfits and tells them to be good for their Papa. They are not quite used to seeing Papa comes home this early. Even Mister Sun hasn't gone home yet. Sometimes their Papa comes home really really late so Yoobin sleeps in Soobin's bed. 

And sometimes Papa would fall asleep when telling them a bedtime story. They don't mind because Papa is so so warm and they always snuggle together until they fall asleep in his arms. 

-

Jongin checks every cabinet in their kitchen to make sure all the things are where they should be. He has baby-proved most areas of the kitchen but he could use some extra precaution since Yoobin is a cabinet-thief and Soobin would never be a snitch.  

He looks over his shoulder to find both his babies lying on their stomach, playing with crayons on a few old papers from work. They are almost the age where he can send them to pre-school now so Jongin is savoring the receiving end to their utmost adoration. Because before you know it, they will become teenagers who don't need their 'lame' dad anymore. 

He thinks they will be good for a week and he will have to do shopping again. They are all well-stocked except for cheese and honey, both things that his boys like a little too much. 

"Papa, Papa!" Soobin calls for him, "Today, Joey goes to Grandma house and buy lots and lots and lots of apples," he chirps happily, Yoobin nods along with his brother. 

These days, according to Yerim, the boys are obsessed with the cartoon character Joey who lives in fictional town Apple Valley with his daddy. Jongin doesn't know if the writers of the show have it out for him. Because it has been one too many times that he has to convince his boys that Jongin won't turn into a butterfly, like Joey's mommy if Yoobin doesn't eat his vegetables or when Soobin says his rice is yucky. 

He braces for what kind of question he has to answer after the shenanigans the show has taught his kids. Yoobin runs to Jongin as fast as his little feet would take and when Jongin bends down to hold him, he just shoves a crumpled paper into Jongin's face. 

Soobin also walks to them and holds his brother's hand tightly. It's adorable really, the more so when they both have colorful crayon marks on their cheeks. 

Jongin looks down at the crumply paper, there are little scribbles of words written in an assortment of the rainbow. He kneels so that he can now talk to his babies closer.

"What is this my babies?" he questions patiently. His kids looking at each other and as always Yoobin speaks up first. 

"We saw Joewy make liss for his daddy," he points at the crayon scribbled paper. 

"List of what, Yoobin-ah?" Jongin asks, looking up and down to decipher what even is drawn on the paper. 

Soobin moves to takes the paper gently off of Jongin's hand as he patiently taps at each caveman (cave baby?) drawing and explains to Jongin.

The list or should he says drawing includes a jug of milk (colored in questionable yellow), a wheel of cheese (he wonders how they know how to draw that) and small pebbles which Yoobin insisted that are chocolate chips. 

"Joey made choco pudding for his daddy," Soobin says sweetly, "We wanna make that for Papa too!" Yoobin finishes his brother's sentence excitedly. 

Jongin bear hugs his boys into his arms as he smoothers them both with kisses. The boys giggle happily, trying to return kisses to Jongin. 

"Papa loves you so so much," Jongin chokes out, overwhelmed by how loved he feels. 

"We gonna make pudding now!" Yoobin exclaims as he wiggles away from Jongin and tries to climb on the bar tool. Jongin rushes to him and plops him on the counter instead. 

Soobin prefers to stay in Jongin's arms as he clings to him when he stands up to talk to Yoobin. The younger twin is now cutely perching himself up with elbows.

"We don't have milk or choco chips, so we can't make them today" Jongin tries, watching his boys' facial expression and worried that one of them might cry from his words.

"It's okay, Papa. Me and Yooie can go buy for you," Soobin smooches Jongin's face between his h